This blog runs parallel to a new poetry blog 'Poetry Pinfold' (poetrypinfold.blogspot.com), and a new blog with poems in Dutch (bartnooteboomgedichten.blogspot.com)

Monday, August 25, 2014

160. History goes on

Francis
Fukuyama became famous for his claim of the ‘end of history’. What he meant was
that rivalry between political ideologies is over, with capitalist liberal
democracy as the only viable ideology left.

This claim
has been much criticized. How about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, with
the claim of IS (until recently called ISIS) to establish a fundamentalist,
extremist caliphate across the Middle East and further.

How about
the rise of authoritarian regimes, as in China, Russia, and Turkey, which allow
for capitalist markets but not for liberal freedoms?

How about
the paralysis of American politics, with the two parties in deadlock of mutual
veto?

How about
populist rebellion in Western European democracies?

In a recent
article[1]
Fukuyama recognized these setbacks but reiterated his claim that in spite of
them in the end capitalist liberal democracy will necessarily prevail.

Methodologically
this is rather weak. In that way one can defend anything that has not yet
happened. The second coming of Christ. Divine miracles. Logically one cannot
prove that something will never occur.

So what is
the argument, and what the evidence?

Fukuyama
claims, plausibly, that IS will not in the long run succeed in its violent
destruction of freedom. China, Russia and Turkey will run into the phenomenon
that with rising prosperity of the middle classes they will demand freedom,
with liberal democracy as the inevitable outcome. That is less self-evident.
Middle classes may choose to be bought into loyalty with prosperity and
privileges.

Concerning
facts, Fukuyama points to revolts against authoritarianism and corruption in
Egypt, Ukraine, and Turkey. Yes, but they have all subsided or been
sidetracked.

My
counterexamples are the street protests in Greece and Spain against the
derailment of financial markets and democratic institutions, the protests of
the ‘Occupy’ movement, widespread demonstrations against capitalist
globalisation.

Those also
seem to have subsided, dissolved, suppressed, or sidetracked. Does that prove
that they were misguided, and does it confirm the triumph of capitalist liberal
democracy? No, not any more than that the subdued protests in authoritarian
states prove their superiority.

I propose
that the rise and fall of protests against capitalist liberal democracy
demonstrate the ‘system tragedy’ that I have argued earlier in this blog: the
inability of a system that has become perverse to reform itself from inside.
Criticism from outside the system falters from the paradox, discussed in item
151 of this blog, that people protest against the results of an ideology of
individualism that they have learned to endorse and practise themselves.
Ideologically, they stand empty handed.

I preceding
items in this blog I have argued how deep, how fundamental, philosophically,
the crises of capitalist societies are.

What, then,
is my answer to Fukuyama’s question what alternative, viable ideology there is,
or could be?

In this
blog have tried to provide fundamental ideas for that, in a new understanding
of equality, individuality, and solidarity (in items 150-152).

Related to
that, as an item of practical policy, I advocated the introduction of a Basic
Income (154).

Does this
amount to a viable and forceful rival ideology? Not yet, surely.

The most
fundamental point is a switch from a utilitarian ethics to a virtue ethics, as
the basis for a radically different view of markets, with collaboration next to
rivalry, with a large measure of reciprocity, and with regard to intrinsic next
to extrinsic, purely instrumental utilitarian views of work and enterprise.

That might
yield some revised form of capitalist liberal democracy, or some variation upon
it, but it would be fundamentally different, perhaps deserving a different
name. Let new history begin.

[1] Francis Fukuyama, ‘At the end of history still stands democracy’,
the Wall Street Journal, 6th June 2014.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Poetry blog

Poems posted on Poetrypinfold.blogspot.comComing down (a memory of Genevaa) NightYin and YangPoetry pinfoldSiëstaDown and out in the mindThe stream bears light (the Nasrid palace at the Alhambra)From one to many Sunday in GoudaOn the canalStanzas of stone (San Gimignano, torre grosso)The words have a ballNo rocket scienceMontreuxNew roomGenerationsSister (Paris)MotherMother 2Blessed solitudeCivil servantAdolescent lamentThe streamTender rip-offNight 2BirdsAtlas unmovedSeminar on KrakmaroDiplomacyDepositionWinter train in ThuringenSarajevoFar aheadHat trick on the canalFlowers of deathOn a camping one night

top 100 blog award

awarded October 2016

Bundles of blog

On my website (www.bartnooteboom.nl) I offer selected items from the blog, bundled according to theme, such as:basic incomea way out for socialism? identity, cultureevolution multiple causalityGod and religionrobots

powerknowledge, truth and inventionethics and moralitythe human conditionself and othertrustmeaning

Eastern and Western philosophypuzzles in philosophydemocracy, autocracy, and fascismvoice and exitNietzsche, nihilism and beyondTime, duration, and discontinuity: Bergson, Derrida, and Bachelardsystem tragedy

power, Foucaultsix more pieces on FoucaultLevinasMontaigneHeideggerBaudrillardWittgensteinZizek and Hegel